The hacktivist group known as Anonymous has definitely been very busy this weekend.

There activities have included successfully attacking the Greek and Swedish governments websites and servers in response to their acceptance of ACTA.  Then there was the embarrassing hack of a conference call between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Scotland Yard where a cyber crime case was being discussed (rather ironic, don’t you think?!).

And now, now we have Anonymous fighting racism the world over.  The group targeted several websites affiliated with the white supremacist movement and stole personal information of customers and registered users of this website.

Having done so, by what the group claims is an effort to combat racism, they released all of the personal details of these people so that they were freely accessible on the Internet.

Full details on exactly what personal details were released are not yet confirmed but it is know that the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the individuals concerned have been published on the Internet which, unsurprisingly, has made them very angry and vocal on the issue.

This comes after a similar breach a couple of years ago where an insider leaked a list of British National Party members on the Internet, complete with their personal details.  Several of the people identified on this list were later dismissed from their jobs including a teacher and a police officer.  Police Officers in the UK are forbidden to be members of the British National Party.  After this leak, many people on the lists complained of receiving unwanted visits at their homes, threats through the post and nuisance phone calls.

Criticism has however been levelled at Anonymous by people who previously broadly support their cause.  They claim that some people have been included on the lists who are not white supremacists and have simply ‘possibly used some of these websites to have a look’.  These comments are however hard to believe as for their personal information such as name, address and telephone number to be stored on a server linked to these organisations, at the very least they must have ordered something or registered with the website.

Some civil liberties groups have claimed that it is a form of vigilante justice and should be discouraged.

In addition to the latest attacks on the Swedish and Greek governments that we have reported on over the weekend, Anonymous have also continued along with their other missions.

Puckett & Faraj, a law firm representing a US marine who was formally charged with the murder of over 20 Iraqi civilians, but who ended up being charged with negligent dereliction of duty after the law firms intervention.  The marine also managed to keep his military career alive, but has had to take a pay cut and demotion.

After the news was released regarding the change in charges and the result of the case, Anonymous set their sites on the website of Puckett & Faraj and proceed to deface the site.  Along with defacing the site they also appear to have deleted most of it’s original content as well as claiming the destruction of gigabytes of personal data stored on the server, mainly e-mails.

Anonymous placed the following message on the homepage of the law firm:

“As part of our ongoing efforts to expose the corruption of the court systems and the brutality of US imperialism, we want to bring attention to USMC SSgt Frank Wuterich who along with his squad murdered dozens of unarmed civilians during the Iraqi Occupation.”

“We went ahead and fired off some shots of our own – at the servers and personal email accounts of Puckett & Faraj. We defaced their website and dumped nearly 3GB of private email messages belonging to Neal Puckett and Haytham Faraj,”.

There has been no comment yet from the US based law firm, however DPS Computing can confirm that currently the site is completely down, with a blank home page and most other content seemingly wiped from the server.

The “Reign Of Terror” that seems to be sweeping the globe continues as Sweden becomes the latest victim to Anonymous.

Although, currently, it has not been officially confirmed by Anonymous, a group linked to the cyber activism group has claimed responsibility for the attacks on Twitter.

Yesterday, we reported on the attacks on Greek government websites in response to the signing of ACTA by 22 EU member states, of which Greece was one.

Now Sweden has been targeted in a effort to make their government think again about ACTA.  The attack is said to have caused widespread disruption to a central Swedish government website which is used by all departments of the Swedish central government.

Officials would not specifically comment on the issue other than to say that “some disruption” had been caused on their servers but that they were not able to comment further as “the government doesn’t comment on security issues”.

With Anonymous stepping up their game, pressure is going to continue to mount on EU governments that have become ACTA signatories and no doubt Anonymous has numerous more attacks planned before the treaty is due to be ratified by the European Parliament in the Summer 2012.

DPS Computing is proud to announce a new feature on the website designed to ensure that you never miss out on the latest, new and updated content on the site!

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If you are already a member, then please log in and your e-mail address will be automatically added to the form.  Then all you have to do is hit subscribe and relax safe in the knowledge that you’ll never miss out on the latest and greatest content ever again!

Here is a video that explains ACTA in a way that computer users of all levels can understand.

The video has been produced by Anonymous, but many of the concerns outlined in it are justified.  ACTA will affect not only the Internet, but your basic human rights.  We must do all we can to stop this legislation coming into effect.  Say no to ACTA!

ACTA, the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which now has over 30 signatories could seriously harm your health according to experts.

ACTA, by it’s definition, would effectively make all generic medication illegal – due to it being classed as counterfeit. This issue was first raised all the way back in 2009 but has come to the forefront again as more signatories sign up to the controversial international agreement – which recently saw 22 of 27 EU member states sign up.

The effects of ACTA making generic medication illegal produce could well be devastating, both at home and abroad.  Developing countries rely heavily on generic medications to control pandemics, such as AIDS, in countries where the patented medicines cannot be purchased due to the massive price tag.

Closer to home, ACTA could well be one of the final nails in the coffin for the National Health Service.  The NHS relies on buying generic

medications (where the 25 year patent has expired) to reduce the costs of fulfilling prescriptions and treating patients.  The effect of ACTA could lead to an unbearable, additional, financial strain being put on the NHS as the organisation is already going through one of the toughest periods in its history.

Supporters of ACTA have stated that the agreement is not designed to target pharmaceuticals but is to target issues such as Internet piracy.  However, whether or not it is designed for one thing or the other, one fact remains clear.  ACTA will allow companies to forbid other companies of making generic forms of their medication.  As to whether this was an intention, or just a byproduct of the agreement is unknown, but either way it could be absolutely devastating to the health of people the world over.

DPS Computing opposes ACTA as the legislation is not fit for purpose.  We urge you to contact your local government representative to express your concerns over ACTA and why it should not be brought into law.

Following the recent announcement of 22 of 27 EU member states signing up to the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the cyber hacktivist group Anonymous have turned their attention to Greece.

Yesterday morning, the Greek Ministry of Justices website was taken down a replaced with a video and a message instructing the government to “stop ACTA [Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement] in Greece” within a fortnight.

This is the latest in a string of attacks by the group Anonymous targeting different nations government websites who have agreed and signed ACTA.

Anonymous are believed to have committed the attack at around 05:21 yesterday and the defaced website was not taken down for many hours after this.

Anonymous warn the Greek government that failure to comply with their demands will result in them targeting over 300 greek websites, mainly government and media websites.  They also claim that they already have the credentials to access the sites that they are targeting.

Anonymous are reported to be continuing growing in support and numbers but true figures on this cannot be accurately obtained due to the secrecy and decentralisation of the group.  However it is evident that the group has a lot of power on the Internet based on the ever increasing frequency of attacks.

All servers from private business to government owned seem to have inadequate protection to defend against these attacks.  This is despite several security experts suggesting that many of the attacks could be “easily prevented”.

Numerous Anonymous led attacks encourage supporters to download their own custom made tool – LOIC.  LOIC stands for Low Orbit Ion Cannon. Many of you will recognise the “Ion Cannon” phrase from the Westwood Studios (and later Electronic Arts) hit warfare game, Command & Conquer.  The Ion Cannon in the game series was a weapon deployed from a satellite which focused huge amounts of energy into a small area and shot it to the ground, causing mass destruction at the point of impact.

The LOIC works in a equivalent “cyber” way as it harnesses the power of thousands of computers and directs it all at a single target at the same time – producing a similar cyber destructive event.

Although the criminal acts and cyber terrorism that Anonymous has participated it are without doubt wrong (and in most places illegal), we can see how many of these recent attacks could have been prevented if such unfair and unjust legislation was not rushed through in such an undemocratic manner.

DPS Computing continues to oppose ACTA/SOPA/PIPA, not because the goals are all necessarily bad, but these pieces of legislation are not fit for purpose.  We encourage you to contact your local government representatives and urge them to put pressure on the central government to not sign / repeal these pieces of legislation.

A picture of the defaced website of the Greek Ministry of Justice is displayed below:

A while ago, Google created a little easter egg in it’s search engine.  The ‘Barrel Roll’ easter egg spins the page around if you use the search engine to search for “do a barrel roll”.

Sounds fun, right?  Wrong!  As the craze has gradually spread over the Internet, Googles “do a barrel roll” search now appears as the top result after you type “do ” in it’s autocomplete function.  The effect of this is that now when you start any search query in Google with “do ” your page starts spinning around.

The first time it might be slightly amusing and scary, by the second time it’s most definitely boring!

One concern is that it may confuse some users of the popular search engine that their browser has been hijacked or that they have been infected with malicious software.  To the users that it doesn’t confuse, it most definitely does annoy.

What do you think of Google’s ‘Barrel Roll’.  Love it or loathe it?  Let us know in the comments section.

After investigation of reports that the servers of Zyngas game Mafia Wars: Shakedown is dropping rapidly, DPS Computing investigated.  We have found that indeed the performance over the past week of these servers has been quite woeful (for at least some of us anyway!).  The results of this unexpected performance drop have included the game running more slowly, taking more time to action requests and in some cases, failing to load the game at all at certain times.  The problems seem to be affecting the games servers more during the late afternoon and evening.

Possible reasons for this sudden drop in performance could be due to the games popularity – and as more and more users continue to install the iPad 2 game the possibilities of performance dropping further are very real.

Of course, over subscription of members on the server is only one possible reason for the problems encountered by DPS Computing and the people who have reported the problem to us.

Thus far, there has been no indication from Zynga about the recent performance of the Shakedown servers.  We will of course update you if this changes.

In the meantime, if you are a current player of the iPad 2 game, Mafia Wars: Shakedown, please comment below and indicate how server performance has been for you over the past few days.

Facebook has announced today, for the first time, it will be selling shares in the company with a total estimated value of $5 billion.

The social networking site, which this year will be 8 years old, is taking strong steps towards making social networking profitable.

Mark Zuckerberg, the current CEO of Facebook and it’s founder, aged 27 is now estimated to be worth nearly $20 billion and owns 28.4% of the company.  The Facebook IPO is set to be the biggest in history for an internet based company with as much excitement, if not more, than there was when Google announced their IPO in 2004.

Facebook is now estimated to have 845 million users worldwide, with approximately 30 million users in Britain alone.  The company turned a profit of around $1 billion last year.

Despite mounting pressure from outsiders to turn Facebook more away from their current mission to make the world more open, towards an even more profitable company, Mr Zuckerberg is resisting the pressure and insisting that he wants to stay on the current course the company is on.

In a letter released by Mark Zuckerberg, he said:

“Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.”

“We think it’s important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do.”